What is clipping? Provide an example.

• A. Shortening a longer word; example: phone from telephone.
• B. Creating new words by combining two words.
• C. Broadening a word's meaning.
• D. Changing the word class by adding affixes.

Answer: (A)

Clipping shortens a longer word to create a new, shorter form that still carries the same basic meaning. It’s a quick, informal way people talk, turning a full word into a briefer version. The example phone from telephone shows this clearly: the longer word is reduced to a single, easier-to-say unit that still clearly refers to the same idea of a device for calling.

This differs from other word-formation processes. For instance, making a new word by combining two words (like notebook from note + book) produces a compound, not a shortened form. Broadening a word’s meaning changes what the word covers rather than its length, and changing a word’s class by adding affixes modifies its part of speech rather than trimming it down.